What Were You Thinking?

Pedro Martinez on Mientkiewicz’s decision to keep the ball from the final out of Boston’s World Series win: "He’s the only one who noticed to keep the ball. Not even Keith Foulke thought to."

Pedro’s on to something here. Nobody was thinking about keeping the game ball, and my take is that’s a good thing, not a missed opportunity. Maybe Keith Foulke wasn’t thinking about keeping the game ball because he was concentrating more on the magnitude of winning the World Series. Pedro’s comment oozes a bit of admiration for Mientkiewicz’s resourcefulness. But what Pedro might find resourceful I find disappointingly cynical, on the part of Mientkiewicz.

If he ended up with the ball, what’s so “resourceful” about holding onto it?

YFJanuary 26, 2005, 3:57 pm

I think the point of that term is that Mientkiewicz thought enough about holding onto the ball and the potential value of the object (not rocket science, admittedly), as opposed to the alternative – giving it up or any other option. That could be considered resourceful, as simple as that sounds.

SFJanuary 26, 2005, 4:26 pm

I just find it hard to impart any cynicism to this. Anyone who’s ever played any kind of competitive sport knows that a championship ball is a prize and it’s also conventional in baseball that whomever ends up with a ball owns it. When it landed in Mientkiewicz’s glove, fortune smiled on him; it doesn’t seem like calculation. Whether he should give it up is another story, but I’m not quite sure why this would be required. The Hall doesn’t want it. If the Sox do, they should pay for it. That’s business. They’re not running a charity.